Oscar Wilde
Published: 2013-02-03
Total Pages: 2598
Get eBook
This carefully crafted ebook is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents of the complete works of Oscar Wilde, containing more than 150 works. Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854 – 1900) was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remembered for his epigrams and plays, and the circumstances of his imprisonment which was followed by his early death. At the turn of the 1890s, he refined his ideas about the supremacy of art in a series of dialogues and essays, and incorporated themes of decadence, duplicity, and beauty into his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). The opportunity to construct aesthetic details precisely, and combine them with larger social themes, drew Wilde to write drama. He wrote Salome (1891) in French in Paris but it was refused a licence. Unperturbed, Wilde produced four society comedies in the early 1890s, which made him one of the most successful playwrights of late Victorian London. At the height of his fame and success, while his masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), was still on stage in London, Wilde had the Marquess of Queensberry, the father of his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, prosecuted for libel, a charge carrying a penalty of up to two years in prison. The trial unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and trial for gross indecency with other men. After two more trials he was convicted and imprisoned for two years' hard labour. In 1897, in prison, he wrote De Profundis which was published in 1905, a long letter which discusses his spiritual journey through his trials, forming a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure. Upon his release he left immediately for France, never to return to Ireland or Britain. There he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life. He died destitute in Paris at the age of forty-six. Content: The Plays: VERA, THE DUCHESS OF PADUA, LADY WINDERMERE’S FAN, A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE, SALOMÉ, SALOME (English Version), AN IDEAL HUSBAND, THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST. The Poetry: more than 100 poems. The Novel: THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY, including THE REVISED 20 CHAPTER VERSION. The Short Stories: THE PORTRAIT OF MR. W. H., THE HAPPY PRINCE AND OTHER TALES, A HOUSE OF POMEGRANATES, LORD ARTHUR SAVILE’S CRIME AND OTHER STORIES. The Non-Fiction: THE DECAY OF LYING, PEN, PENCIL AND POISON — A STUDY IN GREEN, THE CRITIC AS ARTIST, THE TRUTH OF MASKS, THE RISE OF HISTORICAL CRITICISM, THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE OF ART, HOUSE DECORATION, ART AND THE HANDICRAFTSMAN, LECTURE TO ART STUDENTS, LONDON MODELS, POEMS IN PROSE, THE SOUL OF MAN UNDER SOCIALISM, PHRASES AND PHILOSOPHIES FOR THE USE OF THE YOUNG, A FEW MAXIMS FOR THE INSTRUCTION OF THE OVER-EDUCATED, DE PROFUNDIS, OSCAR WILDE’S LETTER TO ROBERT BROWNING, PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA, THE DECORATIVE ARTS, THE HOUSE BEAUTIFUL, THE TRUTH OF MASKS. The Journalism: A HANDBOOK TO MARRIAGE, A RIDE THROUGH MOROCCO, ARISTOTLE AT AFTERNOON TEA, BALZAC IN ENGLISH, DINNERS AND DISHES, HAMLET AT THE LYCEUM, LONDON MODELS, MR MORRIS ON TAPESTRY, MR WHISTLER’S TEN O’CLOCK, MRS LANGTRY AS HESTER GRAZEBROOK, OLIVIA AT THE LYCEUM, THE AMERICAN INVASION, TWO BIOGRAPHIES OF KEATS, TWO LETTERS TO THE DAILY CHRONICLE, WOMAN’S DRESS. Apocrypha: TELENY.
